Don Richardson To Speak Near Asheville, NC

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Author, former missionary, and contextualizer Don Richardson will be speaking at a 10:00am breakfast on September 22nd at Asheville Christian Academy, near Asheville, NC.

Richardson will share his personal experience as a missionary in Papua New Guinea.  He will also share from his many years of missions development work including the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course.

He is the author of Eternity in Their Hearts and other books. All of Richardson's books focus on what he calls his "redemptive analogy" thesis: the idea that each culture has some story, ritual, or tradition that can be used to illustrate and apply the Christian gospel message.

Don and his wife Carol served for 15 years among the Sawi, a Stone Age tribe of cannibal-headhunters who valued treachery as an ideal. Don designed an alphabet suited to their language, authored 19 primers, taught the tribesmen to read in their native tongue and translated the New Testament into Sawi. More than half of the Sawi came to Christ!

To sign up for the breakfast, click here.

Contextualized Prayer Beads

Check out this blog post at Circumpolar regarding the use of contextualized prayer beads among Muslims, or at least how they're being used by one worker.  I'm not sure if prayer beads can be considered art objects or not, but the post is worth noting nonetheless.  What do you think?

An Interview on Contextualizing Ecclesiology

A traditional Kazakh rug.  Photo by Mark Heard.

I found this interview over at 9Marks Blog.  9Marks is a ministry dedicated to equipping church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources.  The interview is with Ed Roberts, a church planter in Central Asia for nearly twenty years.  Ed discusses the importance of contextualization in his (and all Christian workers') ministry and gives a list of five suggestions for good cross-cultural contextualization.  I found the first suggestion to be especially insightful:

Realize that our goal in contextualizing should always be to clarify the gospel and biblical doctrine. Our goal must not be to make others comfortable with Christianity or the Bible. It’s not to minimize persecution by minimizing the offense of the cross. And we do not want to confuse our culture with the gospel. We do not proclaim ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord (2 Cor. 4:1-6).

Check out the link above to read the rest of the interview.

Searching for a Practical Theology of Contextualization

I've been spending a lot of the last month or so working on my shade garden, hence the lack of posts here on Indigenous Jesus.  However one thing that I've been thinking about in the back of my mind for some time is the subject of a theology of contextualization. I have a few books on contextualization (see below), but was wondering if there is a standout book that both discusses the theological background of the subject along with practical missiological examples, especially if they relate at all to the arts. I know that a lot has been written on contextualization, which makes it a bit difficult to narrow down to just one or two books.

I do think, however, that a theological foundation is essential to engaging in the practice of contextualization in ministry. And until or unless I take some theology classes on the subject, I'd like some thought-provoking reading that might help pull together all of the various strands– history, theology, examples– and give a practical, working theology of contextualization.

The books that I own are:
Contextualization in the New Testament: Patterns for Theology and Mission by Dean Flemming
Contextualization: A Theology of Gospel and Culture by Bruce J. Nicholls
Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models by David J. Hesselgrave and Edward Rommen

The most recent new title I've seen is Contextualization in World Missions: Mapping and Assessing Evangelical Models by A. Scott Moreau, who teaches in the Missions and Intercultural Studies Department at Wheaton College. It looks very thorough and may be what I'm looking for.  Has anyone read it?

Other books on contextualization that I'm aware of are:
Christianity In Culture: A Study In Dynamic Biblical Theologizing In Cross-cultural Perspective by Charles H. and Marguerite G. Kraft
Contextualization and Syncretism: Navigating Cultural Currents by Gailyn Van Rheenen
Models of Contextual Theology (Faith and Cultures Series) by Stephen B. Bevans

Any other suggestions or insights? Thanks!

Tim Keller on Contextualization

The other day I came across Tim Keller's book Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City, which features three chapters on contextualization.  Chapter 10 is called "Active Contextualization," and is essentially a printed version of Keller's lecture that I posted about here.   I haven't read the rest of the book, so I can't comment on the other two chapters about contextualization, but Chapter 10 is definitely worth a read.  In it Keller discusses how to practically approach the process of contextualizing the Gospel in any society, whether one's own birth culture, another society, or even a different generation.  Although Keller's ministry context is Manhattan, the points that he makes in this chapter could be applied to any place or culture, western or nonwestern.

Sorry for the delay...

I haven't been very a very productive blogger for the last couple of weeks!  Unfortunately, I've had to postpone a couple of potential topics for various reasons, which has left me empty-handed for today's post.  Not to mention that I've had spring fever since my last post and have been spending a lot of time working on the shade garden!  I will try to redouble my efforts in the coming week and hopefully generate a new post in about a week.

In the meantime, here's a great audio link from the Anglican1000 website that was sent to me by my friend Marcia.  It's a lecture by Tim Keller on contextualization, where he discusses why contextualization (of preaching, in his case) is necessary in expressing the Gospel and reaching those who need to hear it.  Although he doesn't deal specifically with the arts, what he discusses would apply to them also.  So I hope you will enjoy listening to it while I'm working on another post!

Here's the link: http://c808066.r66.cf2.rackcdn.com/04_2011_A1K_Keller_P3.mp3
To download the mp3, right-click on the player itself and select "Save video as...".

You can also access the lecture through iTunes here (Lecture #12).